The Emotionally Healthy Leader Podcast

If you're reading Emotionally Healthy Success with your team, start with the introduction videos and discussion guide we created to go with it at emotionallyhealthy.org/success. This episode is meant to supplement your reading and conversation.
I could have written about a dozen reversals in the life of Jesus. I chose four, because they're the four conversions God had to work in me.
For years I prayed for results. I led out of charisma. I trusted my best ideas. I measured growth by critical mass. That list probably looks familiar. It's the admired, applauded model of Western church leadership, and it lives inside most of us.
In this episode, I step back from the individual reversals to show you the pattern they make together: from results to communion, from charisma to weakness and limits, from our best ideas to discerning God's voice, and from critical mass to critical yeast. Underneath all four sits one enemy, the false self, dressed up as success.
These reversals touch how you pray, who you are as a leader, how you make decisions, and how you build. Listen in, and ask God which one he's pressing on in you right now.
Join Us for a Free Webinar 
Are You Measuring What Matters Most to Jesus: A New Scorecard for Success in Life and Leadership, Nov. 10th, 2 PM ET.  Learn more at emotionallyhealthy.org/webinar.

Pre-Order Pete Scazzero's forthcoming book, Emotionally Healthy Success, at www.emotionallyhealthy.org/success and get a free chapter.
When I finished the first chapter of this book, I was ready to move on to the hopeful part. My editor sent it back with a hard word: "Pete, you can't get to the cure until you've told the truth about the disease." I didn't want to climb back down into that pain. I had already lived it. But I did, and it became the hardest chapter in the book to write.
In this episode, I look at what happens when we hand our scorecard to everyone around us: boards, peers, congregants, social media. The damage runs in three directions. We do violence to ourselves, abandoning the person God made us to be. We do violence to those closest to us, the spouses, children, and teams who absorb our hurry. And we do violence to God's work, rushing ahead of him and blocking the slow formation he wants to do in us and in others.
You cannot rebuild until you reckon with the damage. If you've been bent over under a weight you've carried so long you've forgotten how to stand up straight, this one is for you.
Join Us for a Free Webinar 
Are You Measuring What Matters Most to Jesus: A New Scorecard for Success in Life and Leadership, Nov. 10th, 2 PM ET.  Learn more at emotionallyhealthy.org/webinar.

Pre-Order Pete Scazzero's forthcoming book, Emotionally Healthy Success, at www.emotionallyhealthy.org/success and get a free chapter.
This is Part 1, and we're starting where the book starts: the lies we call success.
For years I measured my ministry the way most of us do. Attendance. Budget. Baptisms. Conferences that promised the next strategy for growth. It worked, for a while. But underneath the numbers, I wasn't reflecting on Jesus. I wasn't in touch with my own shadow, my fears, my perfectionism, my anxiety. And the wreckage from that started piling up long before I was willing to see it.
In this episode, I walk through five of the most common false scorecards leaders use without knowing it: the size of our ministry, the extent of our influence, the praise we receive, the pace of our growth, and how we compare to everyone else in the room.
If you've ever felt like you should be further along, this one's for you. Listen in.

Join Us for a Free Webinar 
Are You Measuring What Matters Most to Jesus: A New Scorecard for Success in Life and Leadership, Nov. 10th, 2 PM ET.  Learn more at emotionallyhealthy.org/webinar.

Pre-Order Pete Scazzero's forthcoming book, Emotionally Healthy Success, at www.emotionallyhealthy.org/success and get a free chapter.
What if you could succeed brilliantly at something God never asked you to do? Is it possible to succeed at the wrong thing?
I spent a good part of my ministry answering yes to that question without knowing it. I built something big at New Life Fellowship while becoming increasingly unhealthy. The numbers were up. My joy was down. It took a church split and two years I never would have chosen for me to face what I'd been avoiding: who am I when I can't prove I'm successful by the world's standards?
This episode opens a seven-part series walking through the book Emotionally Healthy Success, three and a half years in the making. I'll tell you the story that forced me to ask what success actually looks like to God, and why I think this question is one you're already living with every time you set a priority or lead a team.
If you've built something that looks impressive while quietly wondering if it's the wrong thing, this one's for you. Listen in.
Join Us for a Free Webinar 
Are You Measuring What Matters Most to Jesus: A New Scorecard for Success in Life and Leadership, Nov. 10th, 2 PM ET.  Learn more at emotionallyhealthy.org/webinar.

Pre-Order Pete Scazzero's forthcoming book, Emotionally Healthy Success, at www.emotionallyhealthy.org/success and get a free chapter.
For years, I measured ministry impact by one word: bigger. I remember walking into one of the largest churches in America, watching thousands of people fill the room, and thinking, this is it, this is critical mass. A staff member who'd been there since it was a thousand people told me something shifted at 7,500. Point people in a direction, he said, and it felt like a tidal wave.
Jesus never built his kingdom that way. He picked twelve. Pulled three in closer. Sent seventy out two by two. The crowds came last, if they came at all. He called it yeast, a small amount, buried deep, working quietly until the whole loaf rises.
In this episode, I walk through the fourth of four reversals from my new book: the move from critical mass to critical yeast. If you've ever measured your ministry by the size of the room, this episode will show you a slower, harder, far more fruitful way to measure it.
Join Us for a Free Webinar 
Are You Measuring What Matters Most to Jesus: A New Scorecard for Success in Life and Leadership, Nov. 10th, 2 PM ET.  Learn more at emotionallyhealthy.org/webinar.